1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus for recording on a recording medium and, more particularly, to a recording apparatus in which an ink is transferred from an ink sheet having the ink to a recording medium on thereby record to the recording medium.
The recording apparatus includes a printer, an electronic typewriter, a word processor, a copying machine, a facsimile apparatus, or the like. On the other hand, a well-known recording system such as impact type, non-impact type, or the like can be used as a recording system which is applied to the invention.
2. Related Background Art
Hitherto, a recording apparatus using an ink ribbon has been known in an impact printer, a thermal copy transfer printer, or the like. In such a kind of apparatus, there has been known a control system in which the end of the effective portion of the ink ribbon is detected by a photo sensor or the like and when the end of ribbon is detected, the ribbon end is indicated or the operation of the apparatus is stopped.
By using such a control system, it is prevented such an inconvenience that the recording is continued without being conscious of the end of ink ribbon and the ink ribbon is completed during the recording operation, so that a defective recording occurs.
On the other hand, a recording paper to which the recording is executed is not limited to the regular size paper but there are many papers of various kinds of sizes such as different lengths, widths, and the like. Therefore, there has been known a recording apparatus having a function such as to detect a size of recording paper and thereby inhibit recording to be executed in a region without the recording paper, for instance, a region of a platen or the like, or a function such as to automatically set right and left margins.
However, hitherto, the ink ribbon end sensor to detect the end of ink ribbon and the recording paper sensor to detect the size of recording paper are respectively independently provided. Therefore, there is a problem such that the detecting system becomes complicated or it is difficult to reduce the cost. To eliminate such a problem, it is also considered to omit the ink ribbon end detecting function or recording paper size detecting function. However, in such a case, the deterioration of the performance of the apparatus is caused.